


Eros&Thanatos

by vogue91



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dandies, Introspection, Killing, M/M, Soul-Crushing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 17:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13816125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Naïve.Until he had met the Devil on his path, in the form of a friend’s smile.





	Eros&Thanatos

_[L’amour est un oiseau rebelle_

_Que nul ne peut apprivoiser]_

Love.

Incomprehensible to his eyes.

Him, used to gaze at art in other people’s faces, to see beauty playing with human life, creating infinite shapes in that world, that had an utter need of always more beauty.

He had seen the purest expression on him.

On that pale face, on those dark eyes, on that deep gaze, perhaps a little naïve, but destined to soon change that naivety.

Naïve.

Until he had met the Devil on his path, in the form of a friend’s smile.

Basil sighed.

From the start, little had he liked the attentions that Henry had paid to Dorian. He knew the boy was like clay, unrefined, still to be shaped, and that Wotton was not the best artisan to whom entrust such a work.

Henry had made him different from the Dorian Gray Basil had known, turning him in a few months into a being that was not man nor beast, a being lacking any ethics or respect.

And yet, Basil could not avert his thoughts from him.

He kept wandering with his mind to the day when he had first laid his eyes on him, the day when he had let himself being captivated by the sound of that piano, by the melody that had been his Muse, that had made him take out the pencil and then letting go to his pure instincts.

He still had that sketch.

From times to times he took it in his hands, and he could spend hours staring at it. In the drawing, he could still catch sight of Dorian’s innocence, his sweet features, his gaze that seemed to be holding the paper captive, drenching it with his beauty.

The same beauty that had rendered him untamed.

His rebellion against the canons of a society in his eyes too prudish, that society he had dragged with himself in a reality where the tiles of perdition and pleasure wedged in almost perfectly, like an infernal dance.

And Basil had kept watching, waiting in vain for Dorian to start to get bored with that existence, futile and shallow.

He had prayed for it to happen and, when he had realized the path taken by Dorian was pointing more and more to the recesses of darkness, he had asked the heaven he could stop loving him.

But the love he felt for the boy, ironically, looked a lot like Dorian himself.

Untamed. Rebellious.

Impossible to charm with the presumption of having control over it.

And Basil had followed that love, without any certainties as to where it would have lead him.

 

_[Et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle_

_S’il lui convient de refuser]_

He had told him.

He had tried every way to make him comprehend he was hurting himself, that this life would have worn him out, to the point of turning him into dust.

And he had tried, during those conversation always too brief, to repress any feeling toward him, to conceal the mysteries of his soul behind a concern that could be called friendly.

And, by the sardonic smiles of the boy, he had realized he had failed.

Aware of that failure, perhaps even more than Basil himself, Dorian had started provoking him, in that sly yet lethal way that his experience had taught him.

A too short experience, Basil kept telling himself, for him to have it perfected like this. Like a natural gift, his way of declaring his supremacy over anyone who laid eyes on him, were they noblewomen, prostitutes. Men.

Dorian, needed to own them all.

He too what was not his, he seduced human hearts, dragging them into his alcove of lust until he got bored. He played people, like marionettes in his beautiful inexperienced hands.

And the more suffering he could cause to the souls of those who desired him, the more he felt satisfied.

Basil splendidly knew that sensation, coming close to him to watch him escape, sinuous, graceful, the perfect hunter with the looks of a sacrificial lamb.

And he ran, he ran. Basil would have just wanted to stop running after him.

But that magnetic force the boy was capable of radiating, forbade him.

And Basil stayed there, suspended in that run without a goal.

 

_[L’amour est l’enfant de Boh_ _ême_

_Il n’ai jamais, jamais connu de loi]_

That night, colours seemed to be everywhere.

They blended in new shades, creating unbelievable optical games, surrounding every corner of the hose.

Dorian danced, ran, seduced, charmed.

Him as well, like colours, was _everywhere_.

Basil felt horribly out of place. He didn’t belong to that ostentation, to that fallacious mirth, to those promiscuous attitudes.

He prized beauty, but was persuaded that it had to be kept like a secret, shown to those who could appreciate it, store it and relishing just in a part of it, until ruin would have come in time.

He fixed his eyes on Dorian.

That beauty was still there. Unaltered, everlasting and perhaps even more accentuated than the first time he had seen him.

And yet, it had turned into something frozen, crystalized on the face of the boy. Something unnatural, that almost disturbed him.

Once again he prayed, asking to be able to divert his gaze from those features almost divine, and at the same time diabolical.

And once again, his senses forbade that to him, in cahoots with his heart that was starting to beat too fast at every step of the young man.

Basil saw him laugh, and he desired to shed all the tears he had. He saw him wear away and come back to life, as if capable of changing skin moment after moment, allowing himself emotions always fresh, renewed.

He saw him buried in his perdition, and in that love created by pure carnality, devoid of chains or limitations. There were no barriers for Dorian Gray, and that absence of laws to rule his existence could be the better expression of the freedom of his soul.

If only he had owned one.

Basil froze, all of a sudden. He had caught a shadow into the boy’s eyes, something deeply... w _rong_. In that moment, it was like nothing was left of the young man arrived to London, convinced he did not own anything worthy of being exploited. That person had ceased to inhabit his body, giving way to the annihilating essence of evil, of lacking of inhibitions, qualms and morals.

All of that was there, inside Dorian Gray.

And Basil still could not stop looking at him.

 

_[L’oiseau que tu croyais surprendre_

_Battit de l’aile et s’envola]_

 

His face was bright.

He had seen passing through those eyes lust, perversion, pleasure.

Now, there was the purest joy.

Corrupted by a vein of considerable madness, he had to admit.

And when he finally came to know the origin of that joy, Basil was horrified.

It was over, all over.

He knew he was not going to see in Dorian the beauty that so atrociously distinguished him.

If he had closed his eyes, he was sure, he would have kept seeing that rotting thing, the paper devoured by worms, the colours thickening in a permanent black, tasting of death.

The soul of that boy that was not going to become a man, the stolen soul, hurled inside that painting in which Basil had poured all his love.

That love that had suffered the same vices destined to the boy’s innocence.

He had deluded himself, for all that time.

Love is like a rebellious bird, he told himself.

And in that moment it had flown away, to never come back in that attic, in that Hell, in that acrid smell of putrefaction.

He thought he could have saved him, without realizing there was nothing that could still be saved in Dorian.

He talked, he yelled. He ranted even, without giving him time to reply.

For he did not want to listen to him, he did not want to hear a word coming out of his lips, since he already knew he was not going to like them.

In a last desperate attempt, he tried to make him open his eyes on what he had become, in vain.

Dorian had already flown away from himself.

And, Basil did not know this, the same fate was about to strike him too.

It was a second.

An excruciating pain, the unpleasant dampness of blood. And the sight of the boy’s eyes, those that had once been so deep, in which Basil could not see anything anymore.

Then death came, quick, and not much obstructed.

He did not mind too much going, not by the hand of that beautiful demon.

He was not going to be forced to watch him devouring himself, consuming, dying.

He welcomed death closing his eyes and making one last effort.

He brought with him the image of the Dorian Gray he had loved, a love crystalized by the very same stabs that he was inflicting on him.

No one would have dared to steal love from the corpse of a nameless man, and with this awareness he let go.

He flew away. But he went high, far from the flames of that earth, far from the flames of Dorian.

 

_[Si tu ne m’aime pas, je t’aime_

_Si je t’aime, prends garde à toi !]_


End file.
